Functional and Performance Testing: Two sides of a Coin

Software Testing is a process of verifying and validating an application against the specified requirements, mostly functional requirements. The non-functional aspects of an application such as performance are considered only after functional. Testing a software for both functionality and performance becomes a value addition to its quality before its launch into the market. How well your application functions and performs; and how much is it meeting the demands from the point of view of user can be carved out through testing only. Functional and performance testing are the two important aspects for attaining the most expected results.

Functional Testing | Just one side of a coin

Functional testing is a way to confirm that each functionality of an application works in accordance to the desired outcome. Functional test cases are created based on the test scenarios from user or business requirements and they try to cover the maximum functional coverage – meaning, they address all aspects of functional requirements implementation. End-to-end functional tests confirm the quality of the application, helping to achieve the goal of delivering the desired business result.

An application what it intends to deliver in terms of functionality can be impacted with bugs or defects and it also impacts the end user experience user which ultimately leads to failure of application in the market.

The following are the benefits that functional testing can offer to your application

It improves the quality of the application, ensuring it to be defect free.

It stimulates real time system usages and ensure whether all the functions of an application work as expected.

Performance Testing | The other side of a coin

Performance testing is a type of testing to identify the performance of a system under a specific load. It is performed to assure not only the performance of an application under different load variance but also the behavior and response of a system under stimulated real-time scenarios. This means to keep a track on the bottlenecks arise when multiple users are performing a specific functionality of an application.

The following are the benefits that performance testing can offer to your application

Foremost, it avoids the potential loss of users who can become your customers

It helps to understand the system behavior under real time scenarios

It helps to measure the end user transaction completion time when multiple users are performing the same transaction

It ensures customers’ satisfaction and builds confidence

The Combination of Two Sides of a Coin for User Satisfaction

The ultimate goal of Software Testing it to ensure an “application under test” to be successful in the market by achieving the business results.

While doing software testing, functional aspects are given the highest priority to non-functional aspects; performance testing is done mostly after an application is stable in terms of functionality. The result of functional tests may not be the same with multiple users as it is with a single user. Not doing performance testing at the same time with functional testing may impact the functional stability of the application. So, if functional and performance testing is carried out in parallel then they can prove value added and advantageous for the final product.

Though functionality is given more importance than performance, performance behavior cannot be neglected. Having an application that works functionally very well doesn’t make sense when it cannot deliver high performance when all its users are using it.

Implementing performance testing parallel to functional testing can prove as an advantage to add more benefits to the quality of an application and there more benefits to it:

Testing most valued and key features of an application under real time scenarios with specified load

Identifying those issues that arise only under load. It saves a lot of time and cost to fix those identified issues early rather in the production or test environment.

Assurance on amicability of end user’s experience

Functional and Performance Testing Solution for User Satisfaction

ClicTest, a comprehensive Software Testing solution, will be helpful in addressing the need of both Functional and Non-Functional Testing. ClicTest is built on loosely coupled architecture, enabling its components to be available as off-the-shelf products for Functional Testing, Performance Testing, Test Management and Defect Tracking.

ClicAutomate– an off-the-shelf product for automation testing, can be combined with ClicLoad – an off-the-shelf product for performance testing, and delivered a single solution to do functional and performance testing concurrently. The other value addition ClicTest delivers is, automated functional test case created by ClicAutomate can be used as an input for performance testing byClicLoad; thus, saving a lot of time on creating performance test scenarios.

The combined solution will deliver the full potential of doing functional and performance testing concurrently.

Author Bio:

Venkatesh Akula– Founder and CEO of Infotree Solutions andClicQA. I always have the fascination for technology and the way it has been revolutionizing the world. Soon when I started my career 20 years ago, I learnt the fact that technology not just simplifies people’s jobs but it also solves problems that people have.

In continuation to our previous article introducing ‘Maven Build Tool’, this article describes some of the most common terms encountered while using Maven. These terms, that have an explicit meaning for Maven, can sometimes be confusing for newcomers. As an Automation QA, you should at least be aware of the below 20+ Maven terminologies – commonly asked in a technical interview as well.

About STS

Software Testing Studio is an attempt to share some incredible knowledge from industry leaders & experts, which should be helpful for anybody to start his/her career in ‘Software Testing’ or to progress it further. Apart from the technical nitty-gritties, one can also find some intellectual posts by industry experts sharing their Wisdom.